Steve Webb: I am grateful to the four hon. Members who have contributed to this debate. I have been asked to keep my remarks relatively brief because many hon. Members want to contribute on a range of other topics, but I hope to offer a few comments in response to the speeches that we have heard.
	I thank the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) for his measured comments on the Health and Safety Executive. I, too, applaud its work, which the Government continue to value. He will be aware that in the context of the comprehensive spending review, all Government bodies, including the HSE, are being asked to make savings. The HSE is doing this very much by focusing on the highest-risk sectors and trying to take a risk-based approach. I entirely agree that health and safety is not a bolt-on and that good health and safety regulation and legislation is not simply red tape. On the other hand, there is a concept of proportionality in regulation. One could try to regulate and legislate to eliminate every possible conceivable risk, but at disproportionate cost relative to the damage that one would do to employment and businesses. As the hon. Gentleman says, there is a balance to be struck. We do not want employers taking chances with people's lives; on the other hand, we do not want to get in the way of employers who basically want to get on with doing a good job and who are not taking risks with health and safety but find themselves constrained by unnecessary bureaucracy and regulations. That is what we are trying to achieve.
	The hon. Gentleman welcomed the decline in the number of accidents and said that there was no guarantee that would continue. He is of course right, although it is interesting that much of that decline has happened at a time when more money was not necessarily being spent and new regulations were not necessarily being brought in. That shows that we can achieve improved outcomes in health and safety without necessarily increasing budgets or passing new laws. Good proactive and reactive health and safety work and good conduct by employers and employees can achieve improving outcomes. The link between spending and outcomes is not linear. We can deliver good health and safety outcomes with a reduced budget, as recent history shows.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the decline in the number of prosecutions, although of course if there were fewer accidents that would, we hope, lead to fewer prosecutions. There has not simply been a step change in the willingness to prosecute. Under the Health and Safety Executive's enforcement policy statement, prosecution is the expected outcome when the investigation of an incident has collected sufficient information about a breach of health and safety law to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and when it is in the public interest to prosecute. I cannot comment on the hotel example that he gave-I obviously do not know the details-although I am pleased that he took the case up with the HSE. I note that he was not satisfied with the response he received, and if he wanted to take that matter further, I am sure my fellow Minister of State at the Department-he is in Committee at the moment, debating the Welfare Reform Bill-would be pleased to hear from him.
	I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter, but want simply to stress the Government's commitment to health and safety, to proportionate regulation and to ensuring that we go on maintaining high standards of health and safety in a cost-effective way. That is our goal. We have set up a review, to be chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, to look for opportunities to consolidate, simplify and abolish regulations without, crucially, putting people at risk. Protecting people in the workplace and society as a whole remains a key priority for the Government. We have found that there have been too many inspections of relatively low-risk and well-performing workplaces, frequent poor advice to business from badly qualified consultants -we want to deal with that-and a complex structure of regulation. Changing that is the goal for which we have set out our strategy. I hope that that is helpful.
	Let me deal now with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). She made an important point about the position of people who are being made redundant and the particular problems faced by professionals. Her constituency has a relatively high proportion of professionals, including those who are unfortunately experiencing unemployment. She is right to say that unemployed professionals face particular challenges, although I would say that they have particular advantages, too. The evidence shows that almost by definition they tend to be more experienced and qualified, they tend to have their own networks to look for work and, on the whole, they tend to be more successful than non-professionals at finding work more rapidly. They also tend to make greater use of private sector recruitment agencies other than Jobcentre Plus. That helps to explain why 63% of those claiming jobseeker's allowance in my hon. Friend's constituency come off it within three months, compared with the national average of 56%. In part, that reflects the higher proportion of professionals in her constituency.
	My hon. Friend made some important points and I know that she has been in correspondence with the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus on this issue. We need to ensure that what we call the rapid response service is effective. She will be familiar with it: when we know that large-scale redundancies, such as those that she mentioned at Ideal Standard in her constituency, are coming down the track, we try, through the rapid response service, to get in there before people have lost their jobs rather than having them go through that. The aim of the service is to help people move quickly into new employment or self-employment, which she also mentioned, connecting people to jobs in the labour market, matching people facing redundancy to known job vacancies and helping people, where appropriate-I take her point about patronising schemes-with CVs and job-search skills.
	My hon. Friend's point about sending people on box-ticking and patronising courses was important and I want to give her some reassurance that we should see an end to that kind of thing, certainly for those who are long-term unemployed and who go through the Work programme. Hitherto, people have been paid for these welfare-to-work schemes regardless of whether they were effective, but under the Work programme the remuneration for those who provide such services will be results-based. If they pay to provide a useless scheme, it will come off their bottom line, not from the taxpayer, but if they send someone on the right course to help them retrain and acquire the right skills, they will be remunerated for helping somebody into a sustainable job. I think that the incentives structure in the new regime will be better.
	Finally, my hon. Friend asked about volunteering, which is an important route back into work. We are implementing what we call volunteering desks in Jobcentre Plus offices, to allow charities such as the Prince's Trust to attract volunteers. In a big society way-I had to say that phrase at some point-we are keen for jobcentres to facilitate such opportunities. We value volunteering, and I hope that the kind of experience that her constituent had will not happen as much in the future as it has in the past.
	The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) described very clearly the situation in his constituency, including the number of people who are dependent on incapacity benefit. I understand that in his constituency, 5,110 people received IB in August 2010, which is a high proportion compared to the national average. Three quarters of those people had been on IB for five years or more.
	That situation presents us with a challenge. I think that both the hon. Gentleman and I would describe ourselves as political progressives. The question is whether it is humane and progressive to say, "Well, you've been on IB for five years, there aren't many jobs round here, and you can't really move easily because the house prices are too low, so we'll just leave you on IB." That has been the problem for years. People just say, "It's all a bit difficult, we'll leave you on IB and we won't really have any contact with you." I do not think that that is humane or progressive.
	The hon. Gentleman might be aware that the outgoing Labour Government planned to reassess people on IB. This project is therefore not an evil plot, but something that was planned by the previous Government. The work capability assessment that he criticised was introduced by the previous Government. In the run-up to the last election, the Department commissioned an internal review of the WCA, and we have acted on its conclusions. Perhaps more importantly, an independent review has been undertaken by Professor Harrington, who has suggested a list of things that need to change to make the WCA better. The Department has accepted every single one of his recommendations. The WCA will also be the most reviewed bit of the benefits system because, from memory, there is a statutory requirement to review it every year for five years. Professor Harrington has kindly agreed to play an ongoing role. I cannot commit him for five years, but he has certainly agreed to carry on for now. He has gone out, sat in on WCAs, talked to people and learned lessons from that. We will continue to refine the process in the light of his comments.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the piloting of these measures. We have been piloting migration from incapacity benefit in Burnley and Aberdeen, and are learning lessons from those pilots. Indeed, some of the figures that he quoted probably come from the pilots.
	It is important to stress that because incapacity benefit stopped a few years ago, anybody who is reassessed on IB has, by definition, been on it for at least two and a half years. Therefore, anybody who is deemed capable of work, either in the work-related activity group or with jobseeker's allowance, will be eligible for the Work programme. The Work programme gives tailored support to individuals, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton. It involves payment by results, so the people who provide such welfare-to-work services will not be paid if they do not get somebody into sustainable employment. They therefore have an incentive to meet the individual where they are, to respond if they have a particular health condition, as the hon. Gentleman said, and to see whether there are particular sorts of work that they can do.
	The hon. Gentleman gave the example that someone with multiple sclerosis had been found fit for work. I was inclined to say, "And?" Clearly, some people with MS are not fit for work, and some people with MS are. The challenge is not to write people off because of a condition, but to meet them as individuals, assess their needs and potential, and identify work that they can do or support them if they cannot work. There will be long-term receipt on the support rate, as appropriate. If people can work, welfare-to-work providers will be paid by results to help them. Nobody will be sanctioned for turning down a job that is not there. Nobody will be told, "We're cutting off your benefit, because you didn't take a job," if there are no jobs there. However, where there are jobs, people will be expected to make reasonable efforts to take them, with the right support. That is the strategy that we are adopting, and I believe that it is more humane than simply leaving people on long-term IB receipt.
	Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) raised a number of issues to do with the Child Support Agency, with which I think every Member will have had considerable dealings. Some of us have had CSA cases for a long time. One reason for the reforms is that we feel that the old CSA system and the so-called new CSA system have not worked. She said that 40p in every £1 of maintenance was being collected, and that situation is nonsensical.
	I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about the need for strong enforcement powers. There are already pretty strong powers in the system, although I cannot comment on why they have perhaps not been used as they might have been in individual cases. There are serious sanctions available, including direct deduction from earnings, and we want them to be used appropriately.
	My hon. Friend was right to make the point about seeing child support in its wider context, and the Department is certainly committed to doing that. We want to ensure that when people break up, there is not an assumption that they should go to the CSA. To paraphrase what she said in the words that someone once used to me, the CSA is seldom part of the healing process. If we can encourage people to seek some sort of mutual agreement at the point of break-up, and provide them with calculations if they need them, that will be a better strategy.
	I absolutely take my hon. Friend's point that when relationships have broken down and there are long-standing cases, the situation will be more difficult. However, I can offer her a word of reassurance. Under our current proposals, an application charge is planned only for initial application to the system, not for reassessment. The cases that she mentioned would hopefully not face such a charge. I believe that the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), is going to meet her to discuss some individual cases, and I hope that she will be able to respond in more detail.
	I assure the House that we want a system in which, when relationships unfortunately break down, there are incentives and encouragement to form an agreement. The CSA will then be able to act on behalf of children and families when enforcement is needed. We hope that it will take firm and effective action to ensure that children and families get the support that they deserve. We look forward to the ongoing contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough to our consultations on the issue.